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EverQuest 2 Wiki:Group Therapy/AA/Stage 3
The long awaited Stage 3! In this stage of the great AA project, we're going to create and convert all the AA's on the site. Useful Links *Category:AAs *Category:AA Lines History One of the things that lead to the AA revamp was that originally AAs were never done correctly. They were split between 2.5 templates (long story, dont ask). After some long work, we got them down to 1 template (AAInformation). Even that one template wasn't quite enough. In the process of sitting down to clean it up, we realized that the way the template had just too many shortcomings in the way it did things. So we just started from scratch, and came up with Template:AA2Information. This new template also handles the long issue of the AA's that are spell-like (active) vs the ones just buffs (passive) Old -> New The other reason for making a separate template is so that we can easily see which AAs are using the old format (which AAs need converting) and which are using the new format (which AAs are completed in the database). As you can see in the upper portion of this page, a box displays how many AAs are still using the old template and how many of using the new one. Unfortunately (for many reasons), converting them is not something we can bot. This is where YOU come in. Converting Old Existing AAs to the New Template The process of converting an existing is fairly simple. *Open the page, insert the appropriate new template, save. *Reopen the page, move the information from the old template to the new one, remove the old template from the page, save. To make the process of converting AAs much easier, we're adding a "helper" link at the bottom of the edit page that will load the page with a special top section with quick insert links for various things. The table below lists the template fields of the old template compared to the new, so you can see what needs to go where. If an AA had a SpellInformation template on the page, move that info into the AA2 template and remove the SpellInformation. Adding AAs from Scratch Using the New Template The single largest part of Stage 3 is going to be adding pages for all of the ones we're missing (that's a lot; look at the box at the top right side of this article again). The new AA template has 2 preload buttons to help make this easier when adding the new article text. Choose the right one based on whether the AA you're adding is ACTIVE (you have to click to activate it) or PASSIVE (it's always on). For your convenience, you can create them from here too using the form below. HOWEVER: Please read the chains section below before you go creating any AAs you think we're missing. Many of the pages that are going to be created are actually just going to be redirects to existing pages. Chains One of the things that we had to deal with the Stage 1 was that fact that most subclass AAs (tab 3, introduced in KoS) changed names as you leveled up to match the latest version you had. Because of this, we made a decision a long time ago, only to keep pagenames for the AAs that a top level player would see (since, in theory, everyone would get to L80 eventually). The one thing about them that DID stay the same was their location on their AA tree. Most people don't know (or care) what the AA is currently called, but they do know where its on on their tree. We're going to take advantage of this fact and use of mediawiki's useful abilities called REDIRECTs and function and chain the names together. For example, say we're interested in a Kick link that fighters get. The AAs in that line might look like: * L5 - Enhance: Kick * L15 - Enhance: Super Kick * L25 - Enhance: Ultra Kick * L50 - Enhance: Boot to the Head Since "Enhance: Boot to the Head" is the last one in the chain, thats the only page we're going to have, but lower level people may come looking for info on "Enhance: Kick" which, we dont have, since that info is on "Enhance: Boot to the Head", they are going to be presented with a "We dont have a page at this name, would you like to create one?" message, and they may spend a whole bunch of time making one, which would be a waste, since all the info for that AA, is at "Enhance: Boot to the Head". So what we're going to do is make "Enhance: Kick", "Enhance: Super Kick", and "Enhance: Ultra Kick" all have #REDIRECT Boot to the Head. This way, no matter which one they go to, they get to the right place. Kunark and Raising the Cap We were starting to make headway into the AA area with getting pagenames for the "last" ones for each class. Then Rise of Kunark came along and raised the level cap from 70 to 80. With the level cap, Kunark added a new "last" for just about every spell line, thus changing all the AAs associated with them. This left us with us with a whole bunch of AAs with good valid info, but not at the "last" name that we're wanting. We need to move all the ones that have good info. If you are a registered logged in user (it only take a minute to create an account, and its good for ALL of Wikia, not just EQ2i), there will be a "Move" button at the top that allows you to "rename" the page to the new name. One of the side effects of moving a page is that a #REDIRECT left behind at the old name pointing to the new name, but this is something we DO want! (and also the whole idea behind the 'chains' idea). If you see an AA that you recognize the name to be the "last" one pre-RoK, but its no longer the "last", just move it to the new name! Effects Tables Almost all AAs are upgradeable. Unlike spells and combat arts, its not easy for users to compare different versions of AAs at a glance (although YOU can examine an AA on your tree to see the next upgrade). The easiest way to show the progression of an AA per upgrade is with a table. We even have a system of templates that make it easy to make a table for this. Example You start off with a "Top" Here's where the "easy" part comes in. You can use as many of these lines as you need. And finish it off with a "Bottom" Notice those 5s in the name of the templates? Thats because this AA has a max of 5. We also have these for AAs with max's of 2,3,5,8 (for the few rare AAs with max of 10, just take out the number). Just change the number in the name of the template to match the max in the template and add more or less red numbers as needed. And to make this whole this easier for you, easy "quick insert" links are on the special "AA Helper" header (this header is available by clicking the "Show this page with AA Helper" link at the bottom of the edit page, or when creating a new AA). Max numbers like 2,3, and 5 are the most common, so we put links for "Top" and "line" templates for those on the helper header.